Boat Care Invention: Scrubbis™ Makes Hull Cleaning No Big Deal

Boat owners put a lot of work into cleaning and polishing their boats, but they seem to enjoy this aspect of ownership a lot - except when it comes to cleaning the hull (bottom) of their boats. They have to either remove their boats from the water to scrub the hulls down or they hire a professional hull cleaner, usually a scuba diver who cleans the hull while the boat is docked. But a Swedish inventor, Svante Bahrton, has created an ingenious device, Scrubbis™, that makes hull cleaning less of a drag.

Scrubbis hull cleaner: image via scrubbis.com

And a dirty hull can be a drag; literally. As many a boat racer knows, the muck (there are not too many nicer words for this gunk) that collects on the bottom of a boat from dead bugs to algae to fuel oil and other marine polutants, can slow your boat down quite a bit. In addition to slowing down your boat, this gunk can lead to corrosion of the hull over time, so it needs cleaning.

Scrubbis cleaning hull: image via scrubbis.com

The three-part telescopic Scrubbis makes use of a patented ribbed sponge at its end that has about 4.5 pounds of bouyancy under water, and therefore clings to the hull without sinking with the weight of the water. Your movements back and forth create the friction against the hull that removes the grease, algae (note the slit in the sponge that picks up the long stringy stuff), and barnacles from its surface.

Currently, the Scrubbis is available in Sweden and Great Britain, but hopefully it will be in the States soon. If you can't wait for this great tool, you can order it from the Scrubbis website or from Force 4 Chandlery in Britain.

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